I'll give the usual answer for such things:
"How much you wanna spend?"

The slides will need to be scanned.  That requires a scanner, either a
dedicated film scanner or a good flatbed with film scanning
capabilities.  If you just want the pics on a CD for viewing on the
computer then you don't have to worry too much about having the best
scanner with the highest resolution.  If you want to print the pics,
bigger is always better (and more expensive).

If you don't feel comfortable doing this yourself there are plenty of
outside sources that will do this for you .... for a big price. And the
quality is usually less than what you could do yourself.

My elderly friend has a collection of 30,000+ slides he's taken since
the 1940's.
When I was first approached about scanning these I thought, "I'm about
to quit my day job."
Fortunately, he has been picking out his favorites for me to scan,
retouch, and make prints from.

I can only tell you what I did, and what my experience has been.....I
purchased a film scanner. (the Konica-Minolta DSE 5400 II) It scans at 5400
dots per inch, which I have found to be excessive....that is, for most of my
slides, (which stretch back over 50 years) I am perfectly happy scanning at
less than half that resolution. This particular scanner is no longer made,
because Konica-Minolta went out of business a few months ago. I understand
that Nikon makes a comparable scanner, however. I recommend that you get a
scanner, and don't pay too much for it....Perhaps under $600.....And get
some version of Photoshop. the latest version is also a $600 program, but
you can probably buy an upgrade, or a student version for considerable less
money.....I think I bought my upgrade version for $175....I already had an
older version that I got in a second hand store....
   At any rate, with these two items, you will be able to scan your slides,
(and negative 35 mm film strips) into your computer, clean them up and crop
good images out of them, and store them on your hard disc. If you have a CD
burner on your computer, you will be able to create CD's full of pictures,
and store them away to save hard disc space, or mail them to your family and
others too.
   Since I also had a lot of prints in file drawers that I had saved up
over the years, I also bought a decent flatbed scanner....the one I
purchased was a Canonoscan 8600F, which also cast me about $175.....(nobody
ever told me photography was going to be cheap, so I guess I shouldn't
complain) This too was a bit of overkill, since scanning prints at anything
greater than 600 dpi is also a waste of time and space.....These items, (the
scanners) come with the software to operate them, and the Photoshop program
will also be able to use this software automatically....It knows that you
have the scanners installed, and will work with them to import photos into
your computer automatically. I have to tell you that using this equipment is
very time consuming, however, so be prepared to spend a lot of time sitting
where you are right now....In front of that screen, clicking away on that
mouse......

Do you have your slides mounted?
If you do have then you could get a slide adapter for you DSLR and
copy them that way. You can get nice results.....especially if you only
want to watch most of the slides on a monitur. Then you can scan the very
best slides using a dedicated film scanner.

The slide adapter is cheap and it is a fast way to get your slides
digitized.
Even if your slides is not mounted I think there are solutions for this
also.

Max

Spend time reducing that ton to a the ones that will really stand the
test of time for interesting, valuable or just plain great.

Get a good scanner.  2800 dpi - 5600 dpi.  Anything in that range.

Learn to use it.  It takes some time and effort and can be frustrating
at first and/or special cases.  www.scantips.com is a wonderful tutorial
and there are others...

Set a pace, say 20 slides per weekend.

Get to it.

Invest (in this case) in "gold" CD's for archive.  (Consider gold DVD's
as well, however the encoding scheme is not as robust as CD for
longevity... fine for video as you won't notice a minor glitch, but
still images on CD is another matter).

Try to slip some enjoyment into the process.

Cheers,
Alan

helensilverburg@hotmail.com wrote in news:1161287044.034715.260640
@m7g2000cwm.googlegroups.com:

       I just pulled a serious bargain a couple of months ago and got a film
scanner with a bulk loader for slides - can do about 60 at a time if
they're mounted. Drop me a line at news[at]wading[dash]in[dot]net (or see
the sig file - same thing) and we can talk about details if you like. Part
of the issue is what condition the slides are in and how much post-scan
work you want done.

       Meanwhile, look at the specs for a Minolta Scan Multi II, which is
what I'd be using. Should be more than enough for all but the largest
prints.

    - Al.